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Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

nytimes.com

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Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#81

Post by jjtheblunt »

mullingitover wrote: post #11

The fact that Amazon exists is a testament to the stunning mismanagement of Sears’ corporate leadership in the 90s and early 2000s. They had all the ingredients and instead simply set the company on fire.

Amazon exists in large part because of a tax loophole in existence when web browsers became ubiquitous, where out of state purchases didn't need sales tax.

So, ordering anything not immediately needed and available on Amazon was very likely to have the lowest price. Talk about viral style growth of customer bases!

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#82

Post by peapicker »

chuckadams wrote: post #73
silisili wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally almost everything, up to and including entire houses. I've lived in two Sears houses, great quality stuff if not a bit small by modern tastes. When I was a kid it was normal for parents to let their kids read the huge yearly Sears catalog to get ideas or pick gifts. By then they'd stopped selling items like firearms and houses but had pretty much everything else. If they had the foresight, they should have…

One of Sears' house brands was Acme, and one of the items sold under that brand was anvils.

So _that's_ how the coyote sourced them.... ;)

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#83

Post by Cyph0n »

tkgally wrote: post #5

The Internet Archive has scans of Sears catalogs from when it was a major mail-order retailer. For example: 1911: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalog-122-spring... 1922: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoebuckAndCoCatalog1922_201... When I was young, they were especially known for their tools: 1974/1975: https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1... More here: https://archive.org/sear…

Wait, were those tools all Sears branded? Hopefully they were private label and not actually manufactured by Sears!

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#84

Post by eddie_sputz »

mullingitover wrote: post #11

The fact that Amazon exists is a testament to the stunning mismanagement of Sears’ corporate leadership in the 90s and early 2000s. They had all the ingredients and instead simply set the company on fire.

Implying that you would've done any better. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#85

Post by musicale »

tdeck wrote: post #53
ericpp wrote: post #3

Meanwhile Sears is still thriving in Mexico under different ownership.

Interesting fact. It reminds me of how K-Mart is apparently big in Australia despite having died a slow and pathetic death in the US. Or how Yahoo is still a thing in Japan.

Almost tells you that there is something wrong with the business incentives in the US; or perhaps sequences of activities like starting with a leveraged buyout, saddling the new company with debt, and subsequently gutting the company to make the huge interest payments, usually to the principals of the deal, are considered gross mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and breaches of fiduciary duty rather than good ways to "unlock value".

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#86

Post by musicale »

rainsford wrote: post #60
brushfoot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the kinds of people who vie for leadership roles at established companies like Sears was at the time. Those people aren't innovators and creators. They're management types, MBAs, bureaucrats. And fair enough: When the ship is that big and there are that many people on board, you often don't want to "move fast and break things," because the downstream effects can be extreme. Now you've just broken a company t…

I'm even struggling to come up with counter examples where a major established company is able to successfully pivot when the business model that brought them success is no long as viable as it once was. Maybe IBM counts in that they still exist, although I'd argue they aren't nearly the omnipresent force they were back in the day. You could also count widely diversified companies, but I probably wouldn't because the…

Apple: suffered from Windows PC competition in the 1990s but came roaring back under Steve Jobs. They doubled down on high-quality design, user experience, and vertical integration, and even switched from PowerPC to x86 and ARM, and from classic macOS to BSD-based OS X.

HP(E): after stumbling with itanium, replaced its proprietary Unix server business with x86 and Linux.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#87

Post by Digory »

compsciphd wrote: post #79
dragonwriter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were Amazon before Amazon, but just didn’t realize it. They did realize it (well, they obviously didn’t have Amazon as a reference, but...). And they enjoyed it for a long time. But, as has happened many times to firms very successful in one set of conditions, they failed to adapt to changing conditions.

except arguably they should have it in their DNA to adapt. How does the company built on mail order not adapt to the new mail order reality.

They were caught flatfooted between being Wal-Mart and Amazon.

Sears had shifted so firmly into retail by the 80s. Then Wal-Mart ate their lunch on low price retail logistics.

Then Amazon came along, and solved last-mile delivery of catalog sales.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#88

Post by musicale »

Digory wrote: post #87
compsciphd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except arguably they should have it in their DNA to adapt. How does the company built on mail order not adapt to the new mail order reality.

They were caught flatfooted between being Wal-Mart and Amazon. Sears had shifted so firmly into retail by the 80s. Then Wal-Mart ate their lunch on low price retail logistics. Then Amazon came along, and solved last-mile delivery of catalog sales.

Perhaps Sears/Kmart could have filled the Target niche, and leveraged Sears' brand portfolio rather than selling them off to make crushing interest payments.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#89

Post by tkgally »

Cyph0n wrote: post #83
tkgally wrote: post #5

The Internet Archive has scans of Sears catalogs from when it was a major mail-order retailer. For example: 1911: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalog-122-spring... 1922: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoebuckAndCoCatalog1922_201... When I was young, they were especially known for their tools: 1974/1975: https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1... More here: https://archive.org/sear…

Wait, were those tools all Sears branded? Hopefully they were private label and not actually manufactured by Sears!

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Craftsman brand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsman_(tools)

My personal recollection from the 1970s is that Craftsman tools had a reputation for high quality and that people I knew bought them at Sears stores.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#90

Post by ctmnt »

tkgally wrote: post #89
Cyph0n wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, were those tools all Sears branded? Hopefully they were private label and not actually manufactured by Sears!

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Craftsman brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsman_(tools) My personal recollection from the 1970s is that Craftsman tools had a reputation for high quality and that people I knew bought them at Sears stores.

I bought a set of Craftsman tools from Sears in the late 2000s. They’re solid.
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